Rising house prices keep 3.3million adults at home with their parents

A RECORD number of young adults are living with their parents as rising house prices keep them off the ­property ladder, official figures show.

Ronnie Corbett as Timothy living at home with his mother in 1980s sitcom Sorry! [BBC]

More than a quarter of people aged between 20 and 34 were still living with mum and dad last year.

The figure hit a record 3.3 million – an increase of 669,000, or 24 per cent, since the Office for National Statistics began keeping data in 1996.

This is despite the number of 20- to 34-year-olds in the UK remaining almost the same.

In 2008, 2.7 million people in this age group were living in the family home, but by 2011 it had jumped to 3 million and by 2012 to almost 3.2 million.

More young men are likely to live at home than women. One in three men in the age group does so, compared with one in five women.

The 1980s sitcom Sorry! featured Ronnie Corbett as a stay-at-home son still tied to his domineering mother’s apron strings in his forties.

But while Corbett’s character may have been the butt of jokes, many of today’s adults are forced to live with their parents because they can’t afford to buy homes of their own.

Even in 1996, the average price paid by a first-time buyer was 2.7 times their typical income. Now the price equates to 4.4 times their income. National Housing Federation chief executive David Orr said: “Moving out and setting up a home of your own is a normal rite of passage.

“Unless we build more of the right homes at the right prices in the right areas, adult children will be stuck in childhood bedrooms and ­parents will be unable to move on with their lives.”

London has the lowest rate of children aged 20 to 34 living at home, at 22 per cent.

Northern Ireland has the highest, at 36 per cent, which the ONS attributes to a more “traditional” ­pattern of cohabiting less and marrying earlier.

The 20 to 24 age group has seen the “most noticeable” jump in those living at home. In 2008, it was 42 per cent, but last year it hit 49 per cent.

This compares with last year’s figures of 20 per cent of those aged 25 to 29, and 8 per cent of 30-to-34-year-olds, living at home.

Government housing schemes such as Help to Buy have been credited with prompting a resurgence in first-time buyer numbers in recent months.